Day Fifty Five - The Pit Boys!
This wasn't entirely well thought out ... at least the getting up early at the weekend part! 😝
After a late finish on the Friday evening the fire for the pit needed to be restarted and fed from early doors! Thankfully Mark got it going at 7 a.m. and I joined at 8 a.m. 😴 ... once we got a bit of heat in it we headed down to the school to prepare the lamb shoulders. The school had given us 4 shoulders and some other ingredients to contribute to the evening ... We marinated the lamb in some olive oil, garlic, lemon zest and lemon juice, marjoram and a load of salt and freshly ground black pepper! We let it marinade for an hour or so while we made a huge batch of pita dough! On advice from one of the teachers we blasted the lamb first for 20 minutes in the oven first ... then we wrapped it in parchment and headed back to the fire!
The fire had burned down to ember by the time we got back (about 11 a.m.) so we put a thin layer of clay on it and then a layer of hay ... then we put in our meaty parcels, covered with hay ... soil ... then the top soil and sods ... There it would sit until 8.30 p.m. 🤞
During the rest of the day we gathered some more firewood and set the garden up for later then I headed to Midleton to get some other provisions for the dinner and then threw together a few salads and some tzatziki. Around 6 p.m. I gathered up a pita making team ... Jack, Fred and Krissi and between us we made around 80 pita flat breads ... 4 people covered in flour can be a bit of a laugh 😙
People started arriving around 8.30 p.m. including Will, my oldest friend from home, who had planned originally to be at the pop up dinner that was cancelled!
We dug up the lamb around 8.30 p.m. ... the worst thing about the pit cooking is you have no idea what stage the meat is at ... is it underdone ... however ... it was pretty much perfect! (better to be born lucky!!!)😇
We managed to let people eat around 9.15 p.m. and thankfully the food was received well ... we had around 40+ people for dinner and raised a bit of money for charity ... so all in all a good night ! 😛
